Today's fire fighters are asked to fill many roles and operate on diverse emergency scenes. These scenes include structural firefighting, wild land firefighting, vehicular accidents, technical rescues, hazardous material exposures, and emergency medical incidents. All of these incident scenes present unique and different challenges. One of the commonalities is the utilization by fire fighters of hand lines with various extinguishing agents on almost every scene. Fire fighters use these hand lines not only to extinguish fire, but to protect themselves and the citizens they are called to serve, at any scene day or night.
Temperatures at the nozzle end of a hand line (i.e., the “tip of the spear”) can exceed 1,000° F. Such extreme temperatures make operating battery powered electronic devices such as high intensity lighting, infrared cameras, video cameras challenging because the battery power needed is prone to failure and even explosion at such extreme temperatures. Having a device that can protect electronics, particularly batteries, at the leading edge of a fire suppression operation would allow firefighters access to critical electronic components where it is needed most. Likewise, monitoring current conditions and providing warning systems to alert fire fighters of hazardous conditions can be critical to avoiding injury and locating lost or incapacitated fire fighters.
In addition to the extreme heat, communication from the “tip of the spear” is a critical component of effective and safe operations on the fire ground, emergency medical scene, hazardous material situations, technical rescues, natural disasters, and homeland security. On today's emergency scene task level workers are forced to communicate with on-scene incident commanders almost exclusively by means of radio transmissions. Those personnel doing the work are expected to relay their environmental conditions, actions, and needs to supervisors and alarm room staff distant from their location. Incident commanders and alarm room staff are required to visualize what is actually happening on the scene relative to their personal experience and understanding of these radio transmissions.
While there have been attempts to equip fire fighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and other first responders with helmet-mounted or body mounted video cameras. These cameras cannot presently be used at the leading edge of a fire suppression operation because of the extreme heat. In addition, these cameras are basically useless in low light/no light environments. They record what they see and in limited visibility situations they are unable to see much, if anything. The dynamic nature of these scenes would benefit from increased visibility and live video streaming to enhance communication and protect the privacy of all people on and in the vicinity of the emergency scene.
Finally, fire fighters are required to carry an inordinate number of hand tools to include personal flashlights, scene lighting, extrication tools, firefighting tools, medical equipment, and radios. The complexity of the work environment and minimum staffing on most emergency scenes makes it virtually impossible for crews to be adequately prepared and carry all the tools they need for any one situation. The necessity to return to on scene fire vehicles to retrieve additional equipment is time consuming and dangerous. Fire fighters need a new option to lessen their work loads, enhance visibility, improve communication, identify unseen hazards, provide early warning, and make the operating environment a more efficient and safer place to work.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a device and method that overcomes the above problems. The device and method would provide a hands-free tool to assist fire crews involved in search, rescue, and fire suppression efforts. The device and method would provide enhanced lighting, video monitoring, and other sensory informational capability to be used in firefighting operations inside or outside a structure.
In part, the device and method would provide for atmospheric monitoring to detect hazardous materials in the work environment. The device and method would provide for personal health monitoring of individual fire fighters to promote early treatment for sickness or injury. The device and method would act as an early warning device for structure collapse, self-contained breathing apparatus air management, or lost/incapacitated fire fighter. The device and method would preferably provide these benefits and enhanced communication through a hands-free/voice-free lighting system easily visible to the fire fighters on the face of the device with an integrated video monitoring and other sensory capability able to provide real time video presentation to incident commanders at locations distant from the engaged fire fighters. With this capability, command units on the perimeter of the emergency scene would be constantly apprised of firefighting operating conditions and could communicate instantly the necessity to change strategy, withdraw crews from dangerous situations, or effect a rescue.